I think this book has a lot of great merits, yet I cannot rate something such as this higher when it has so strange a premise:

Tolstoy postulates that Christ didn't live, that we don't need a living Savior, and that Christianity is two-thirds deception, and then he says that the principles which Christ taught are going to save the world.

It's a remarkable example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

If there is any reason to live the gospel of Christ at all, it is because Christ lived, and that what he taught is so completely non-fiction that we ought to spend our entire lives developing faith and understanding in it.

Tolstoy had a penchant for rejecting everyone and everything. From my limited impression of his work, there's not a thing in the world he accepted other than his own--and self-proclaimed as ever insufficient--perspective on truth.

Now, all that being said, I think his application of Christian virtues is beautiful. He gives strong encouragement to his reader to chose to live the gospel "right now," to recognize that all of the accomplishments of man can and are washed away in the blink of an eye, and to focus on developing compassion.

The book also was one of Gandhi's most influential sources for the development of Non-Violence, and when you read this book you will notice the massive foundation it laid for Gandhi.

It was not well-received when it was written--being banned by Russia and, when Germany printed it, it never sold very heavily--and I believe that was because of the fact that he let go of Christ's hand in his writing in order to have more room to hold onto Christ's lesson scrolls, but it's definitely worth the read if you have the time.

You can listen to it on MP3 for free on Librivox.org, and the reading is pretty good:
http://librivox.org/the-kingdom-of-go...